Wrong-way driver charged with DWI

Friday, December 20th, 2013 at 12:05am

Firefighters check the damage to a Dodge Stratus that was traveling the wrong direction in the northbound lanes of Interstate 25 on Wednesday night in Santa Fe when it hit a truck carrying three people. There were no deaths. (Courtesy KOAT)

This is what was left of the Dodge Stratus whose driver was allegedly drunk and heading south in I-25’s northbound lanes after the Dodge hit a truck Wednesday night near Santa Fe’s St. Francis Drive. (Courtesy of Santa Fe Police)

SANTA FE, N.M. — In the latest of a series of wrong-way wrecks on Interstate 25 in the Santa Fe area, a driver who smashed head-on into a truck, injuring three occupants near St. Francis Drive on Wednesday night, has been charged with aggravated DWI.

Wrong way crashes
The stretch of Interstate 25 near Santa Fe has become danger alley when it comes to wrong-way, drunken drivers. Here are some of the wrong-way driving cases in and around Santa Fe on – or just off – I-25 over the past several years:

March 4, 2013 – A woman who admitted she’d been drinking and was driving south in the northbound lanes caused a three-vehicle crash that injured a pregnant woman and led to the premature birth of her baby. Leela Perez, 26, of Santa Fe, was charged with great bodily harm by vehicle for the Monday evening crash.

March 23, 2010 – Cecilio Jaramillo, 28, of Santa Fe, and Mariah Arguello, 18, of Las Vegas, N.M., were killed when Jaramillo – driving a 1990 Lincoln south in the northbound lanes – slammed into the Suzuki that Arguello was driving on I-25 south of Pecos. Jaramillo’s blood-alcohol content was measured at 0.445 percent – more than five times the legal driving limit.

June 27, 2009 – Just off I-25, on Old Las Vegas Highway – which runs parallel to the interstate and functions as its service road east of Santa Fe – Santa Fe-area resident Scott Owens, in a Jeep Cherokee, T-boned a Subaru with five teenagers inside. Four were killed. Tests showed Owen’s BAC at 0.16 percent, twice the legal limit for driving. He was acquitted of a vehicular homicide charge.

March 13, 2009 – A wrong-way driver with a 30-pack of beer in his truck, who later refused a breath test, was driving south on I-25, made a U-turn on I-25 just north of the Old Pecos Trail exit to head in the wrong direction and hit a car. The driver of the car swerved just in time to avoid a head-on collision. Neither driver was seriously hurt but both vehicles sustained major damage. The wrong-way driver was charged with aggravated DWI.

May 11, 2008 – A Toyota Camry driven south in the interstate’s northbound lanes by a 20-year-old Eldorado man slammed into a Jeep carrying four teenagers about 12:30 a.m. near Santa Fe, but everyone survived. The Camry driver was charged with aggravated DWI.

Oct. 10, 2007 – An 18-year-old man was charged with DWI after deputies stopped him going the wrong way on 1-25 near Cerrillos Road. Fewer than two weeks before, on Sept. 30, 2007, a woman was seriously hurt when she crashed trying to avoid a wrong-way driver on I-25 just east of Santa Fe.

Aug. 24, 2007 – A California man who said he’d been driving for 20 hours straight was pulled over after his pickup was spotted traveling south in the northbound lane of I-25 near Old Pecos Trail in Santa Fe. He was charged with driving under the influence of drugs.

Nov. 11, 2006 – Dana Papst, who lived in Tesuque just north of Santa Fe, slammed his pickup truck into a van carrying a Las Vegas, N.M., family while driving south in the northbound lanes east of town, apparently after making U-turn after he missed his exit. Killed were Papst and five of the six people in the van. Papst had been drinking on a flight into Albuquerque that night and also bought beer in Bernalillo on his way to Santa Fe. A blood test showed his BAC at 0.32 percent, four times the legal driving limit.

Joe Salazar, 52, of Santa Fe, is also charged with having an open container inside the vehicle and reckless driving. The three people in the truck have all been released from a local hospital.

Investigators found an empty bottle of vodka in Salazar’s Dodge Stratus and “think he was drunk when he caused the head-on crash,” according to a statement from the Santa Fe police. Officers have not confirmed whether the vodka was consumed on the evening of the crash or sometime before.

Salazar was seriously injured and will be booked on the charges when he is released from the hospital. He is accused of driving south in the northbound lanes of I-25 when he crashed into the truck just before 8 p.m.

“It was a pretty horrific crash, a high-speed crash that was head-on,” said Santa Fe Emergency Manager Andrew Phelps.

“We really dodged a bullet here,” said Santa Fe police spokeswoman Celina Westervelt. She said so many similar accidents have had tragic consequences “and thank God it didn’t happen in this case.”

The three occupants of the 2011 black Ford pickup truck were two men ages 31 and 39, from Española and Rowe respectively, and a woman, 43, from Pecos. Their names were not released Thursday.

Online state court records don’t show any prior DWIs for Salazar, but he was arrested in 2012 on assault charges, police said.

Santa Fe firefighters had to extricate Salazar from his badly damaged car and they remained at the crash site for about two hours. The northbound lanes of the interstate remained closed until about 3 a.m. Thursday, Phelps said.

The police department’s DWI unit and Fatal Traffic Unit were at the crash site for hours and their investigation continues. New Mexico State Police provided traffic control.

Just before the crash, a tip came in on the state Drunk Busters line saying someone “was driving erratically in the city” and “multiple (police) agencies were searching for the driver,” a city police department’s statement said.

The SFPD’s Westervelt said there also was a Drunk Busters call about a problem driver on I-25 near San Felipe, about 20 miles south of Santa Fe, before the wreck, but it wasn’t known Thursday if that call was related to Wednesday night’s wreck.

Police Chief Ray Rael said the accident should put holiday revelers on notice about the dangers of driving drunk.

“We need to see this as our wake-up call,” Rael said. “The holiday season should be filled with happy memories and celebrations, not tragic losses due to inexcusable and irresponsible decisions made by drunk drivers.”